


Underground

by Airdanteine



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Under the Red Hood
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-09-06 20:09:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16839544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Airdanteine/pseuds/Airdanteine
Summary: Roy's successful Star City drug trade mob, the Arsenal, is looking to expand in the East Coast: specifically, Gotham. The Red Hoods have taken interest-not only in expanding trade, but his eclectic leader has special interest in Star City's red-head maniac. The boys take to Gotham's finest underground strip club to celebrate, and come across a beauty so divine, so graceful on the pole that they had to take this Dick Grayson home. But the bad boys better watch out-beneath the drapes of his dress lies a cold, engraved badge.





	1. Chapter 1

__

_When Roy heard of Jason’s return to the land of the living, he ran to him._

_He ran out of the crack house he was hosting, his bewildered men stumbling over themselves to fulfill his commands, broke into Ollie’s plane at the private airbase and flew straight from Star City to Gotham through the darkness and night fog. He didn’t think through the landing-just kind of crashed it in an abandoned tenement lot, but at that moment, Roy wasn’t thinking. Hadn’t been thinking. He just wanted to see him again._

_As he’d come to know, he’d landed right in Jason’s hidden garage of sorts, where Jason and his newly formed gang, the Red Hoods, tinkered away on their rides. But Roy didn’t care. For when he stepped out of the plane to see Jason’s bewildered face right in front of him, he felt like fate had united them._

_It wasn’t too hard to fall back into habits._

_Roy’s cheek rested on the chalky concrete ground, fingers stroking up and down Jason’s perfect set of abs. They’ve both grown up, and Jason came back with a thick physique Roy could only worship. Jason was on his back, lighting a cigarette._

_Smoke blew into the perfect night air._

_“We need to establish a trade route, you know,” Jason rambled, and there was that genius mind, working overdrive to work out the future._

_“A trade route?” Roy questioned, voice amused. And a bit confused at what Jay was on about._

_“A trade route,” and Jay rolled to his side to press his chest against Roy, Jay’s hand clasping on his hip._

_“From your drug deals in Star City,” and Jason’s finger trailed up from his hip to his arm, before booping his nose. Roy blinked. Perhaps the coke on his teeth transferred._

_“To my arms trade in Gotham,” Jason finished and booped himself._

_“Get it?” Jason asked, and honestly, Roy thought, Jason could ask anything of him, and Roy would deliver._

__

With a light press of the heel of his syringe, liquid spurted, spilling drops onto his dress pants.

It was no different, teeth clenching tight on tied fabric, finger feeling for previous holes at the vein. 

Prick. 

Roy regarded heroin as his liquid diamond, the claim to his fame, the slosh of priceless sensations unfurling in the brain. Roy’s cartels ravaged Washington state almost entirely dependant on these diamonds, building a reputation for selling good H for cheap. Cutting corners, but never cutting.

However, addiction was a curse of relativity. After a while, diamonds got boring. Now, they wanted platinum. 

And this new strain in town now coursing through his veins, gave him _platinum_.

It wasn’t hard to understand now, why wife beaters and prostitutes of Star City were stumbling stupid on cold streets, begging for mercy, screaming in inexplicable delight. It had yet to touch the news, cops hushed by Feds now bent on infiltrating neighbourhood, _his_ neighbourhoods. Feds, because Star City was a mark of a nationwide spread. The drug was supposedly Gotham-born, making it’s way to Central City, Coast City, all the damn cities across the countries.

Roy could understand why. This hit _hard_.

Roy’s head swung back, hitting the wall. His men were rushing to him, shaking his arm and softly pulling his head from the hole in the drywall. In retrospect, it was all so sweet, but in the moment the press of callous on his bare skin, nails scraping at his suit, collective breaths huddling over and crowding him only bore a primal need to squirm, move, run _get away from me get away from me GET AWAY FROM ME–_

Fear.

Roy held up the now empty syringe, slightly rocking back and forth, pupils focusing on the bits of liquid left in his instrument. One of his men coaxed it out of his hands as the lights turned to full brightness. Another checked his pulse and lifted his eyelids, shining a torch near them, and Roy’s pupils barely constricted, still stuck somewhere in hazy panic. 

The next morning, Roy stepped on the chrome-lined steps up a plane, letting inevitable nostalgia begin to seep through his abused veins. 

If there was a reason compelling him to make the fateful trip to Gotham all over again, he didn’t think it would be because of _this_. This time, he flew in his own plane, bringing a few men along, snarking, guffawing, smoking the plane with the piss smell of weed in what Roy considered peak ambience. It’s what he’s aimed for, all those years ago. But up in the air, feeling his ears pop under pressure, watching clouds fall behind to reveal the clear skies above, Roy felt a numbness settle over his emotions. Roy took some _normal_ H to add.

He watched the plane plow through sunrise and touch down on legal airspace, got up and out on the smooth cement, the rhythmic thudding of his suitcase against his calf synched to his fitful heart. He didn’t know what he was doing-well, that was inaccurate. He had a few reasonable circumstances, all that ironically made him more unsure. One thing was certain though.

Gotham was nothing like home. 

Star City was made of wet cement and sea foam, of soft pattering of raindrops on your skin. Of warm sunshine parting through heavy rain. An ocean to one side, mountains on the other. A bustling city with a country soul. And at night, Star City _shone_. 

Gotham, however, was a dense dredge. Roy could feel a trapping heat and smell a musty scent secrete from the many alleys he walked past, and his feet had to dodge trash at every few paces. His eyes were strictly off the ground, but he could still see the quicksilver movement of rats scuffling through metal fences.

To be fair though, when Roy climbed up onto a rooftop, 15-floors in the air, he could see Gotham shine too. 

Roy took a deep breath, eyes averting the winding view before him. Fear still coursed through his veins, and he had to be careful not to let the outlines of window frames warp into razor-sharp brambles;the gothic spired-rooftops into long, grasping tentacles;the gargoyles into blinking, living demons of the night. 

He silently signalled his men to keep watch on the other three corners. He kneeled on the fourth and pulled out his bow, his chosen view giving him direct line of sight to a ground-level warehouse door.

It was more of a shutter-rusty corrugated metal with several damp, torn flyers and posters taped all over. Any onlooker would think it was rusted shut-a factory that’s moved out, now useless, lost to time. But Roy knew better. What he couldn’t believe, however, that the Red Hood didn’t.

There was a small gap in one of the metal folds, a peep of a hole that wouldn’t be noticeable by someone on ground level. But 15 floors in the air with a scope on his bow, Roy could spot pulsating fluorescent reds, purples and blues emerge from it like firefly to light. Roy would usually take that as the universe parting the sea for him and knock on the door, maybe stake out a bit, but Roy had a better idea.

Bow steady, Roy pulled out an arrow, twirling it a few times before nocking it. He steadied his breath and pulled, watching the slightly moving arrowhead line up to the bulls-eyed gap.

If someone’s going to tell a paranoid homicidal maniac to be paranoid, it’s going to be Roy.

~

Jason watched that gap with the steely glare of a disgruntled mechanic.

This was a new location, one he’d snatched from Roman’s hands to purely piss him off. But the practicality of the location pleased him, so here they were, house-warming, before hitting up their favourite and his recently acquired night club to watch suited men grind on girls. The Red Hood technically didn’t mingle with his ~~captives~~ businessmen, but there was value in rubbing shoulders. Or the equivalent of it while maintaining his mystique, which was him lording at his perch on the high kitchen countertop while intra-gang leaders drank the first half of the night away. 

But his position unfortunately, or he supposed really was fortunately, revealed a flaw that sounded every alarm in his riddled, paranoid brain. He had half a mind to grab some junkyard materials and hammer that hole shut _pronto_ , but, well. This was technically a party, and he was technically the host.

Jason gulped his bourbon down in both irritation and the intention to forget this boring ass night.

But as the bottle was raised, he felt himself blink, followed by the distinct, echoing sound of metal piercing wood. 

Jason aimed his guns at the gap faster than his brain could process-that useless noggin, by the way, enraptured in the sheer familiarity of the sound. He knew it was an arrow even before he saw it, and its distinct crimson red threw Jason so off his game that he’d fell off the counter–recovered in time to make it look like an intentional slip, but he had the advantage of a distracted audience. He looked back at the gap, so small that he could barely make a single shape though it, and holstered his guns. He walked to the arrow, carefully trailing an area that an arrow could certainly not hit, stepping over his frightened, squirming men to carefully reach for it.

He pulled it out the table-a feat that uprooted the area completely-and twirled that red thing between his fingers.

Roy. The dramatic bastard. Jason closed his eyes, feeling a numbness settle over his emotions.

“Lift the door,” Jason spoke to a mook, voice thunderous through the modulator. The man looked hesitant, as he should, hands hovering at the wheel.

“What?” One of the suited pansies squealed, and Jason tuned it out-his own mind was filling with equal parts screeching paranoia and sheer joy. The rusty thing started to lift-and Jason made the mental note to oil their side clean-and viola, the Gotham Night Skyline revealed. To display gargoyle-like figures perched on a sky-high rooftop.

But in the dim moonlight did an outline form, painting a shadow-shrouded figure in stark red highlight.

Jason’s heart sang all over again.

~

Dick pressed a hand on his chest.

Closing his eyes, he felt his heart thud faster by the second. He took controlled, measured breaths, letting his body ride through the anxiety. Girls in rustling skirts and jingling bells rushed by him, some stopping to look, and if Dick opened his eyes he’d see jealous looks and pursed lips. And Dick could do none to clench his eyes tighter and _remember_ one very crucial fact. 

Dick was born to perform.

When his mouth ached with bright smiles, when his vision was spotty from bright lights, when his ears were blocked from the sheer sound of uproar and applause did he feel truly alive. He was made for it.

He opened his eyes, taking a deep breath, lungs filling alongside his swelling confidence-for now, at least. Reasserting his priorities, he looked at himself in the mirror, and picked up a tube of lipstick.

Dick dragged the lipstick wand over his lower lip, tasting its fragrance of cotton candy. He pressed and puckered his lips a few times, watching the gold glitter of his lip gloss merge into his cobalt lipstick, slightly mattifying. Dick frowned. He applied another layer, ensuring the gloss looked like a gold-flake glass enclosure on his lips. 

Satisfied, he smiled, eyes drinking in his look. He’d dripped liquid gold eyeshadow (a miracle creation blessed by the gods) on his eyelids, with the same cobalt eyeshadow framing the glitter and brought above the crease to fade into the tail of his eyebrows. He’d managed to somehow scrounge dark blue eyeliner and made full use of it, with bold cat eyes and thickly lined waterlines. His cheeks were practically smothered in gold highlight, and dabbed his chin and nose with some too. He skipped the blush to maintain a supernatural look-bare highlight blending into contour made him look like a golden creature of the night.

Taking a step back, he messed with the bobby pins in his hair, and ran a hand down his dress. It looked like armour, the kind of lady armour video games at least, long flowing blue sleeves with metallic gold patterns on his chest, cutting of right where his belly started. A v-shaped gold girdle framed his hips, and blue fabric fell from it, a high slit positioned at his left leg. The fabric was transparent of course, and his form ghosted behind the translucent blue, gold and glitter. The perfect tease.

If his mother ever found out he’d modeled this outfit after her wedding dress, she’d have a damn fit. Or cheer him on to fuck with the gadjo. Or do something animated or wacky that his weird, wonderfully strange mother would do. Would have done. His mind conjured an image of their family photo-a few polaroids with Pa and him smiling performer’s smiles, while his mother stuck her tongue out, waved her hands around her face and crossed her eyes. 

(Another candid photo depicted them all similarly tongue lolled and cross-eyed. She was infectious.)

But that photo was locked away now, along with everything that identified him. Tonight, he was not Dick. 

He was a performer.

~

With a yawn and a stretch, Roy’s arm finally settled onto Jason’s shoulders. 

This close to him, Roy could see Jason roll his eyes behind the whites of his domino mask, but a ghost of a smile form in the tilt of his lips. The feisty man said or did nothing, so Roy presumed success. 

That is, until Jason yawned, then snuck a hand between his back and the couch, settling on Roy’s hip. Roy contemplated the score-point system relevant to cheesy-first-date-shenanigans until Jason softly tickled his side, and he realised he might have lost this round. 

It was obvious to Roy that Jason brought them to a strip club on purpose, though why exactly eluded him. This wasn’t the usual musty affair though-the lounge was lit in neon lines of lights, blues and purples and reds lighting the dark walls with mystical intrigue. A small stage with a lone pole stood before them, while girls in 6-inch glass heels danced around poles placed in little islands surrounding the stage, twirling with the kind of strength and grace reserved to actual pole dancers. They were stripping, of course, slowly untying the strings of their bras and panties with deliciously lazy grace. Roy didn’t think strict, disciplined Jason would be all too into this kind of thing, but he supposed the Red Hood’s sudden epidemic-like acquisition of several gangs in Gotham would provide Jason side-assets with unforeseen benefits.

Jason motioned for drinks-which immediately brought upon an entourage of pretty waiters and waitresses placing drinks on the glass table and sliding in beside them, smiling coyly as they poured them drinks. This one girl practically curled up into Jason-black hair, blue eyes, and Roy could see from the look in her eyes, she knew him. Intimately, probably. No, definitely, Roy thought, as she tipped Jason’s head up to pour a shot in his mouth, Jason complying without a shred of protest. Clearly, Jason owned this club. Knew it in and out from the glass tables to the glassy eyed girls. 

It finally clicked, the answer embarrassingly obvious. Jason was flexing, like Roy did with his arrow.

It was all incredibly hot.

“I think I know why you’re here, Roy,” Jason grunted between puffs of smoke, and just like that, the casual veil of mutual ignorance slipped. Roy sighed.

“Oh? Tell me,” Roy gave a lazy smile, watching Jason smirk in kind.

“Well,” Jason moved to stub out his cigarette, then leaned back on the seat to give Roy his full attention. Roy couldn’t see through the domino but felt watched all the same, and Roy could only respond in kind, turning his body towards the other. They looked at each other, eyes searching for everything familiar and everything different in the lines of their faces. 

Roy leaned in to kiss Jason. 

That smokey taste of tobacco greeted his tongue, and Roy melted into it, ticking and adding to his ever growing list of “what Jason likes” as he nipped and bit into the other’s mouth. Jason gripped his face in kind to give slow, long, languid kisses.

“Well,” Jason’s breath was hot, his thumb softly stroking his jaw. “From that, I think you came all the way for me,” Jason’s sleazily grinned, likely enjoying how Roy’s cheeks were dusting pink. Roy merely smiled, their faces still in each other’s spaces.

“Sir,” a voice behind them cleared their throat, and Jason begrudgingly pulled back. Roy settled back into his seat, feeling the hands of some pretty girl softly grip on his forearm. Roy didn’t even know what she looked like, didn’t bother to turn his head to discern through the dark. His priorities were much rather on the rippling lengths of Jason’s thighs tightly clasped by gun holsters.

“We brought the big guns out tonight,” said a burly man to Jason’s right, standing straight and eyes avoiding Jason. Like a good little soldier.

“That’s what I like to see,” Jason spoke, before placing another cigarette between his teeth.

“Oh,” said the man, coughing slightly, and some of the girls collectively smiled slightly. Roy could feel his hackles raise, but Jason seemed calm. “You’ll see, sir,” the man finished, as the lights of the stripping girls’ islands went out. The main stage was lit. 

And a beauty slinked on stage.

Curled black hair, framed in blue silks and gold chiffon. Thunderous blue eyes. The beauty touched the pole and slowly danced around it, toes on their tips as he twirled, finger lightly touching the pole. His eyes were focused on Roy and Jason-and if not, Roy’s mind must be compelling his mental image to.

The beauty lifted up, and Roy oh so badly wanted to know his name, watching as he made slow spins around the pole, skirts and sleeves rippling slowly along. He touched down for a moment to gyrate against the pole, pressing and rotating his hips against the pole as he slowly leaned back, positioning himself as to show how his abs responded to the slow rolling waves. Roy felt his back thump into the couch, body uselessly numb, except for that crawling desire curling beneath. 

The beauty took up again, climbing further up before kicking his legs off to twirl around, those flowing sleeves falling to reveal thick, strong biceps curling with effort as he turned. Beauty placed his left bare foot-which Roy finally noticed-on his right knee, twirling in a kind of superhero pose. Beauty pulled himself up, arms maneuvering him as he raised his legs, spreading them open in an upside-down split. Roy registered Jason gasping next to him, and Roy turned his head to see the Red Hood just as enraptured. The girls were leaning back, barely touching Jason-barely touching Roy too, on his end, all of them possibly just as horny. 

When Roy looked back, he could see, _feel_ Beauty’s eyes on him, pulling every bit of his attention in again, and Roy was more than sorry for thinking he could ever look away. Something about that gaze was curtailed to enrapture them, tell them to _look, look at me. Let me show you what you want._ Roy wanted it, wanted everything Beauty could offer, watching as he intensified every turn and twirl, performing feat after feat with pure grace.

Beauty began to climb further up now, midway on the pole, and turned a few times, the gap between the pole and him jetting wider and wider with every turn. Then suddenly, with no warning, he kicked his legs up-first to side and away from the pole, skirts flying up and pleats spreading like a fan, and made a split parallel to the pole, skirts slowly sliding down. He then cycled his body around to the other side of the pole while maintaining the split, arms switching as he twirled, and brought his legs to face the audience, and through the lifted skirts both men witnessed for the first time that night, a peek of his gold thong. 

Roy gasped. He heard Jason swallow beside him.

Beauty bent into a backbend as his hands reached behind to unclasp that decorative metal cage on his chest, pulling it off and letting it clunk on the ground. He did a slow somersault, one arm gripping back on the pole as his body straightened, the other unzipping the blue fabric and peeling it off his skin. It revealed more of his beautiful golden tan skin, and his chest was bare-good, Roy thought, ingraining the pinkness of his nipples into his brain.

Beauty slid down to the ground, stepping in front of the pole to roll his body, and god, Roy had never been more bi in his life. Beauty’s slim waist and wide hips juxtaposed with his slopes of muscle was, undoubtedly, absolute perfection. 

Beauty climbed back up again, and he let one arm sway to his side as he twirled, and Roy watched that delicate hand tug at his skirts, and both Roy and Jason leaned forward, at the edge of their seats. Roy watched, unblinkingly, as they came off in one fell swoop. The fabric floated away as he turned, pausing deliberately when his back face the audience, and posed. 

Dear _god,_ Roy thought, as he witnessed that godly ass. So impossibly round, so fucking plump, all Roy wanted to do was eat it all up. Beauty slowly turned, showing all angles of that perfect ass. That barely-there excuse of underwear covered the one thing left, and Roy wanted it gone so bad he could climb on stage and get rid of it himself.

Beauty began climbing-but this time, with a level of intensity those showcased focus more than tease. He passed the midway point, going up and up the very top. Wrapping his thighs around the pole, Beauty’s body drawing itself inwards, seeming like he was preparing. Roy watched uselessly, feeling as if he knew what was coming. And in that moment, Beauty looked at them, and smiled. 

Beauty released his grip.

Beauty’s body dead dropped down the pole, everyone gasping from the sheer shock of movement. Hands free, he tilted back, arms stretched wide as if asking the heavens to take his soul. Roy could see the skin of his bare heel skidding against the glass, shrieking as the spot lights flickered and freaked it hot reds, yellows and pinks. Beauty fell and fell till the ground was inches beneath his feet when his thighs _clenched_ , and his descent stopped. 

Beauty’s body, now back-bent, jerked up in the whiplash. His arms caught the pole, turning his head to looking at Roy and Jason, mouths gaping. The music crept back up, and Beauty climbed up a pace, stepped in front of the pole and turned himself upside down, body completely pressed against the pole, facing the audience. Legs clasped, he released his hands to tugs at the strings of his thong.

“Stop.”

~

Jason barked before he could process what we was saying. As he’d been doing as of late. Roy’s head snapped to look at him, eyes heavily dilated, looking at him pointedly like he was crazy. His man, the club owner stepped into his line of sight, looking just as confuddled.

“Private room,” Jason breathed, composing himself as much as he could. “Get him to a private room.”

“Yessir,” the man quickly resumed professionalism as he beckoned the beauty’s attention-he was still upside down, fingers still interlaced with the string. No, anything beneath was for his and Roy’s eyes only. Jason was stupidly possessive like that, and he didn’t care. 

He turned to beckon Roy with a tilt of his head, and Roy got the message a while back-slowly rising from his seat, hunger crawling in those intense green eyes. He was biting his lip-and fuck, Roy _knew_ Jason loved that. Jason was still processing his presence, and he had a few ideas why he was around, but that was for _later._ For now, there was a change in plans, and he dealt with it by practically pulling Roy to fall into step, walking swiftly to a set of doors. 

The room was just a smaller lounge, that same blue-purple-red lighting, with plush seats and a glass table with a pole running through its middle. Jason sat down, beckoning Roy to sit right next to him. The Beauty-

“What’s your name,” Jason asked, pitching his voice up a bit to seem less threatening, if that was possible. 

“Which?” Beauty asked, clutching onto his drapes of skirts, entirely covering the front of his body. Everything about his body language was demure and graceful, but his eyes watched Jason’s like a hawk.

“Whichever.” Beauty made slow, careful steps towards the both of them, head slightly lowered. Jason wasn’t sure if it was anxiety, or if this raven siren was a product of the streets, keeping their wits about under a veil of submissiveness. The girls in this club were encouraged to be raunchy, as witnessed by how one saddled up so close to Roy without reprove, so Jason reckoned there was a history behind–

“Dick,” he spoke as he one by one dropped his heap of clothing to reveal that golden toned body. Jason wanted to lick all over it, bite and drink every last inch of him. But no, Jason had to hold back, clutching the vinyl of the couch to better evoke self-control. No touching strippers. Furthermore, Jason knew every prostitute that worked this district, and this ‘Dick’ wasn’t one. Even if he was new, Jason was not about to cross any lines.

“Oh?” Roy finally spoke up, his signature sleazy amusement seeping back into his voice. Jason excused his lack of chattiness by Roy giving him the right of authority, and generally being bamboozled by this ‘Dick’.

Dick merely rolled his eyes at Roy’s suggestiveness, likely having been teased for his name thousands of times before, before backing up to rest a hand on the pole. Dick lifted and placed a bare foot on the top of the table, then pushed down, letting the round glass sink to the floor, leaving a clear dance floor.

“What would you like, sirs?” Dick asked, that soft voice too innocent for the way he experimentally moved his body, slowly rotating his hips as he arched into the pole.

“I say he puts those hips to use, huh, Red?” Roy’s voice was husky and low, and Jason could see Roy clutch his knee at the corner of his eye. 

“Damn right,” Jason grinned devilishly, and beckoned Dick forward. Recognition sparked off in Dick’s eyes-and Jason had to commend his intelligence, the way he could pick up a cue and deliver exactly what they wanted

Dick walked towards them, stopping before the both of them to pose, tracing his delicate fingers from the tip of his collarbone and down the planes of his abs, rotating his hips as he slowly stepped to Roy, keeping his eyes trained on Jason. Flickering back to Roy for a moment, Dick traced a finger along Roy’s jaw, tipping his head up with a finger. They looked into each other’s eyes, and Jason found it impossible to abstain from palming himself.

Dick then turned around to grind that gorgeous ass on Roy’s lap.

Roy groaned, visibly straining to clutch the couch and sit still, letting Dick grind and twist and slowly twerk in his lap. Dick let a finger slide to his thong, and slowly pulled at it, both Jay and Roy going stock still as he did so-before snapping it back in place. Both men panted, realising they were holding in their breaths. 

Dick cast his head over his shoulder, only for a moment, to wink. Both bewildered men just blinked. Dick threw his head back in laughter, and Jason felt the corners of his mouth inevitably turn up, watching the man eye them in amusement before resuming his twerk, bouncing his ass on Roy’s lap.

Jason reached to grab Roy by the back of his head, gripping those fiery locks, watching those stark green eyes roll back in pleasure. Dick threw his arms up as he grinded side to side, pressing back further and further onto Roy, and Jason looked up to drink in the sight as he bit into Roy’s shoulder, indulging the ginger in his pain kink. 

Dick turned and climbed onto Jason’s lap in one quick motion, taking Jason by rare surprise as he began to grind into his lap, those gorgeous curves moving to the faint music seeping through the doorway. Dick got closer and closer, much too close than any stripper would dare, trailing his hands down Jason’s arms to his wrists, picking them up and pulling them to Dick’s body. Jason’s eyes widened, her fingertips ghosting Dick’s hips.

~

“Wait,” the Red Hood spoke, jerking back slightly to release himself from Dick’s grasp. The expression on his face was hard to read, considering the domino plastered over his eyes, but Dick could interpret that grimly set jaw all the same.

Dick huffed. They were being more than courteous, following rules that strip clubs themselves considered a guideline. No touching? Men would smack his ass if he danced too close to the stage. 

Oh, and small note, this was his _boss_ here. The Big Boss. As far as Dick was concerned, the Red Hood and the Arsenal could dig their fingers into his skin till it bled. As long as Dick could make like a groupie and...leave an _impression_ on the Bosses. 

“Are you sure?” Red asked, and Dick found himself going slack in surprise. Dick didn’t know why–from both their behaviours tonight, Dick half expected to sign a sheet of consent. But here the Red Hood was, below him, and the insanely unexpected bonus of the Arsenal beside him, asking if he wanted this.

Dick had a decision to make. 

To climb a tall ladder, you must make peace with the burn of its rungs.

Dick gripped Red’s hands again and pulled it to his abs, leading them down his torso to rest them on his hips. Red gripped-and god, he gripped, an undeniable strength channeling through his thumbs as he massaged Dick. Red ran his hands across his thighs, up his torso, then lightly brushed across his nipples. Dick moaned.

Arsenal got up to stand beside him, breath hot down his neck and hands hovering around his hips. Dick took a few seconds to understand he too was asking for consent, and with a roll of his eyes, he grabbed the redhead’s hands to make them cup his pecs. Red must have caught his expression, for he chuckled and hooked a leg around Arsenal’s, pulling him in closer.

“Let him know how you feel, babe,” Red growled, and Arsenal finally mobilised, groping his pecs as he pressed his hips into Dick’s. Dick felt a long, hard cock press against his ass, rubbing against him through the fabric. Both men hooked their fingers under Dick’s gold thong, slowly pulling it down. As Red pushed it to his knees, Arsenal cupped his hands under his ass, then groaned.

“Oooh, god. Jay,” Arsenal moaned, running feather-light fingers along the curves of his ass. “Jay, feel this,” Arsenal guided Red-now Dick supposed, Jay’s hands to it.

“God,” Jay groaned, pinching the underside of his cheeks as Arsenal rubbed circles into them, and Dick leaned into the attention, the two sets of hands exploring his every inch, looking and treating him like he was Aphrodite incarnate, rising from the sea foam and inexplicably into their arms.

If Dick was perfectly honest, he’d say the burn of rungs was obsolete when banging two extremely hot drug lords.

[ ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16838764)

~

Roy liked to end nights like these with a hit.

Technically, it was morning, dawnlight casting through the curtains and reflecting on the surface of his syringe. Tie, pull, prick. Roy slowly put the instrument down, then slammed his back on the hotel bed. The lull of television news drifting in the background, the punchy words and quickening chatter kept him somewhat anchored and receptive as the world around him slowed to a halt.

“I’m a little high,” Dick murmured, eyes peeking between folds of sheets. 

“Yup. Fucker brushes his teeth with coke,” Jason spoke as he emerged from the complementary coffee setup buck naked (and that damn mask), with a glass of water in one hand, and black coffee in another. Jason hiked a knee on the bed, leaning to press the glass of water on Dick’s cheek.

“Just...how much?” Dick received the water with quiet gratitude, sitting up to rest those plush lips on the edge of the glass.

“Enough,” Roy grinned, then looked at the slightly disoriented beauty attempt to coordinate himself, brushing back aftersex hair and blinking wide, dark eyes. 

“Sorry,” Roy murmured, wondering the effectiveness of nicotine patches against uppers. In retrospect, that sounded delightfully counteractive. Dick simply shook his head, and sipped on water. Jason settled beside him, drinking his coffee in one hand and slowly brushing the bangs off his face with another. Always keeping those hands busy.

“Breaking News” coloured the screen before them, as it had been doing every 15 minutes or so, and the anchor with her grim set jaw and barely restrained shock read the copy she was given. The screen flashed with video from rich showboating Gothamites thrashing their bodies in the middle of parties to junkies dragging their legs across the street and foaming at the mouth, words “Gotham,” “Star City,” and “Epidemic” flashing by.

Jason took a last sip, and settled his cup on the carpet.

“Gotham’s been calling it ‘Hysteria’,” Jason spoke, still stroking back his bangs. “Yours?”

“...Holy Terror,” Roy spoke, immediately blushing. Jason snorted.

“Hah. Your whole state thinks it’s country.”

“Might as well be. Sea to one side, mountains on the other, the country below-”

“Pfft. I’m sure you hate it here,” Jason grinned, looking down at him with those white covered eyes. 

“Not as much as I hate that thing,” Roy gestured at the mask, and Jason only smirked. Roy had yet to see Jason’s eyes, hadn’t for years, and Roy was this close to changing that. Back him into the bathroom, rip that fucking thing off and drink his fill. Make it his next addiction.

Jason ghosting a finger across his jawline, looking at him expectantly. Roy leaned into his touches, racking his mind for many-practiced lines.

“So, I came here on a hunch. Scarecrow,” Roy spoke, looking up at Jason pointedly.

“He’s out of Arkham,” Jason grunted, and Roy could make out faint guilt. “So yeah. The obvious suspect.”

“I was thinkin’. This new H could make us mad bank,” Roy started, tracing a finger up Jason’s rippling biceps.

“Remember. When you said, you wanted a trade route,” Roy reached up to boop Jason’s nose. Jason went still, finger pressed at his jawline. Roy breathed, deep and fast.

Jason leaned down to eat his mouth.

Roy dragged them up the bed, resting Jason’s head in the pillows as they kissed, teeth sinking and tongues lashing in lusty violence. They rolled around, thrashing in the sheets till Roy’s back met Dick, who placed a measured hand on his lower back, and smiled into his shoulders. Roy’s fingers brushed his thighs in apology.

“Finally,” Jason breathed, keeping a vice grip at the back of his head. The edge of his domino mask curled in, and Roy could be courteous enough to press it back. Could.

“So?” Roy lazily smirked, as if he himself wasn’t equally wrought in elation. “You wanna have a go at it?”

“Roy. I’ll go anywhere with you,” The husky rawness of Jason’s admission had Roy gently pulling him in for a slow, soft kiss.

Dick murmured something into his shoulder, and Jason’s body jolted forward, clicking their teeth, and drew back slightly to stare at Dick.

“Hey-” Roy started to complain, tongue running along a scraped lip, but stopped as soon as he registered Jason’s demeanor. Roy turned to look at Dick, who’s eyes were still closed, completely unaware. 

“Wait. What did you just say, Dick?” Roy slowly asked, eyes darting between the two. Dick’s lips formed a sweet smile, eyes blinking awake.

“Joy. Jay and Roy,” Dick started, and Roy felt his blood freeze. 

“Put it together, and it makes Joy,” Dick blinked up and both Roy and Jason, smile slowly fading at the recognition of their shock. Dick quickly slapped a hand over his mouth, eyes darting between the two. 

“Um. Ah,” Jason spoke, and Roy got a taste of what astonishment sounded from his mouth. Jason sat up, blinking at Dick, at Roy and back. He absently touched the mask, sitting straighter once his fingertips touched the peeling edges.

“This is an issue.”


	2. Chapter 2

In retrospect, it was all very rudimentary.

The dissemination of Hysteria was simple. Gotham’s Narrows were a breeding ground for a lot of things-disease, poverty, and junkies desperate enough to buy drugs from the street. Jason sat perched on a crumbling rooftop, watching the largely abandoned street through his helmet lenses. Roy covered his six in a taller building, watching through the scope of his bow. 

A white van slowly rolled into the neighbourhood. No license plates. The stopped in front of an abandoned loading dock, not caring to pull in. Soon enough, a woman in hole-ridden sweater and slacks, scratching at her veins walked into view, towards the van. Its doors slid open. A burly, armed man peeked through the doors, shuffling around for a bit before producing a ziplock bag with an outrageously tiny amount of uniquely green powder. They exchanged hands, the woman holding onto her crumpled cash a little too long, to which the man violently tugged it from her, slid the doors shut and rode away.

Miles away, more vans rode the slums of America, getting the impoverished addicted to fear. 

It was just that simple. 

The woman did it in front of them too-produced a spoon that was tucked in her bra, hunching over to pour the powder and light the lighter away from the biting, howling winds, melting it down enough to pour it into her syringe and stick it into her skinny arms. 

Jason opted to look at Roy for the moment, letting the woman buck her body, punch the air and scream in partial privacy. Roy nocked an arrow with a small, spherical device blinking on the end of it, trained on the slow-moving vehicle, and took his shot. The arrow stuck more than in struck on the roof of the engine, the red stick-end falling off almost immediately. Roy turned to Jason with his trademark lazy smirk, before rubbing his perpetually red nose.

Jason never tried to think too hard about _it_ , all that white powder dust on his jeans, fingertips, in his gums. But if they were going to...be together, then Jason was going to have to make some decisions. 

The controller in his pocket beeped at a successful connection. He’d have to have that thought another time.

Rather, now, their most immediate concern was a sulking beauty lain beside him.

Dick impatiently shifted his skirts, the iridescent silk shifting between warm red-oranges and cool pink-purples. His blouse framed his pecs like busty cleavage, cropped above his abs. Jason was positive this outfit would come with a shawl, but Dick must have made the creative decision not to, and Jason was a little thankful for it. At least, appreciative enough to ignore the intensely idiotic decision that was wearing shiny fabric to a stake-out. 

Though, for once in Jason’s life, he let things slide. Since Dick’s discovery of their names, Jason had to make the executive decision to keep Dick close. The information Dick now held was priceless, a kind of power the Red Hood’s enemies would sell their bodies for. Dick was first surprised, a coy smile curling at the edge of his mouth, and Jason supposed that was the vixen siren’s plan all along, seducing them at the pole and climbing into their laps to have a chance at being The Red Hood’s personal consort. 

Then Jason clarified how close they were going to be, as in flank-me-while-under-heavy-gunfire close, and Dick’s face contorted in several expressions close to incredulity, all while Jason hurried him to get some clothes on. Even Roy seemed a little concerned for his mental well-being, suggesting a hundred different alternatives from bodyguards to solitary confinement. But Jason wasn’t taking any chances. Dick needed to be right in front of him. So reasonably, at Dick’s fashionable retaliation, Jason didn’t feel little putting his foot down again. The Red Hood and The Arsenal were capable enough.

Dick hiked his feet up on a dusty window ledge, resting his chin on his elbow to huff.

“This is not good for my skin,” Dick whined, twirling a strand of his curly hair. 

“Yep,” Jason grunted. He didn’t buy the act. The act of wearing skimpy clothing in biting cold was the superpower of street hookers, and Dick was braving the winds just fine. Honestly, Jason found it commendable.

The clank of metal on metal above them was followed by the buzzing sound of a zipline, and Dick cracked open the rusty window in time for Roy to hop through. Roy pressed a grateful kiss of Dick’s cheek. Dick blew a strand of hair off his face.

Jason turned on the tablet screen of the controller, watching various graphics, maps and splitscreens all displaying various intel. The bug’s- _his_ bug, mind you’s-best feature was its function as a virtual carjack, accessing the little computer within the van, giving Jason a range of options from increasing or decreasing the heating in the vehicle, whichever was more torturous, to entirely shutting the van down. Whoever thought going keyless was a good idea?

But Jason wasn't here for that. He instead let the program collect destination history from its GPS, and with a quick browse deduced where they’d dock for the night.

“That’s anti-climatic,” Roy spoke, leaning over his shoulder. Jason shrugged.

“We’ve got nothing on Scarecrow yet. It seems low budget enough to be him, though,” Jason grumbled, bringing up the satellite map of the possible headquarters.

“Either way, we’ve got where we need to go,” Roy suggested, voice cheery. Jason decided long ago to not argue against it.

“Okay, good,” Dick hopped off the ledge, dusting his skirts. “Are we done here?” 

“Nearly,” Jason murmured, looking back at the street. The woman writhed in darkest corner of the loading dock, legs digging into muck and trash as she repeatedly banged the back of her head against the brick wall. There was nothing Jason and Roy could do, or didn’t want to do at the risk of being seen and recognised.

Jason looked at Dick, who too watched the scene, mouth set in a grim line. 

A thought.

“Dick, can you do something for me?”

~

“Go away, I don’t fuck with no boypussy,” garbled the woman, clawing at Dick’s proffered arms.

Dick sighed. Dressing like the exotic stripper he was had its ups and downs. 

Though, as Dick threw a look back at where Jay and Roy stood, watching his back as he slowly coaxed the woman to walk with him, he never knew he could utilise his prostitute invisibility like this.

Perhaps constant confinement with suspiciously considerate drug lords wasn’t as bad as he thought.

~

The van drove through the sticky, grimy alleys of the Narrows and into an abandoned factory site that likely used to support hundreds of impoverished Narrow men and women, but now stripped to its scaffolding. They’d come at the dead of night, so it was annoyingly annoying to spy at a building with zero lights in a 10-mile-radius. Jason was grunting, likely adjusting his helmet night vision, while Roy spied through his bow-scope with his orange visor. He liked to keep it on thermal instead, finding it much easier to make out the forms of people. Especially their heads.

Dick’s warm body was pressed between the two, his peach-scented perfume likely rubbing onto their suits. Jason would call it a liability, Roy found it endearing. 

The mission was simple. This was preliminary research of production of Holy Terror at worst, and finding Scarecrow at best. The sweet middleground being taking over the facility and making it theirs, Red Hood style. They were going to infiltrate the building, find out where the van’s getting it’s H from-either very likely being produced here, or if not, collect intel on it. Possibly try to find evidence to pin on Scarecrow. 

“They’re crawling,” Jason growled, head slightly moving, likely marking all visible patrolling bodyguards with his Detective Vision, like Roy did with his patented...Roy View? He was working on it. Either way, an immeasurable amount of bodyguards patrolled each floor, the gaping holes in every other inch of the building more than unfavourable for sneaky infiltration.   
“Fuckhead’s got the money for a couple hundred big boys, but peddles with a van?” Roy spoke, raising an eyebrow.

“Test subjects. Small groups at a time,” Jason murmured, feigning being distracted. 

“Small groups? Jason. The H is everywhere.”

“Yes. Everywhere, in small groups,” Jason turned to look at him, and Roy expected rebuke only to be telegraphed a resonant “idk.” Roy sighed. That’s why this mission was as much gathering intel as it was capture and conquer. 

Roy raised his scope back up again, watching the men mill. Jason would likely suggest going top-down, leaping onto the roof, decimating the guards and then diving in with uphill advantage. Roy would take out the men visible through the cracks with his bow first, then zipline in. 

“How bout I keep my bow busy on the middle floors,” Roy started, recounting the men on those floors.

“And I take out the roof and get in. Gotcha,” Jason spoke, the voice modulator almost disguising that Robin glee in his voice. Roy chose not to comment. Jason then spun to his side to pointedly look at Dick.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Dick attempted at a sneer, but it came out as a pout. 

“Right,” Jason sounded skeptic, dear god that paranoiac.

“Jason. He’s not going anywhere,” Roy spoke, pointing at the 12-floor-drop below and the immense gaps between buildings. Jason huffed and puffed, then turned his back to them, drawing his grapple gun. Child.

“On my mark,” Jason commanded, and Roy allowed. “3, 2, 1-”

Roy nocked three arrows on his bow, sending them straight to the goons’ necks. Jason shot and swug on his grapple, dropping with the grace of a ballerina to suckerpunch a man in his balls. Dick gasped behind him. 

Roy quickly picked out men who came running into his views on various floors, taking those bobbing heads out like bowling ball to pins. Roy then shot one end of his zipline on the edge of his building, and the other on the absolute middle-floor of the factory, zipping down with his bow as handle-bars.

No need to dramatically crash in for Roy leaped through a cracked window, feet connecting a goon’s head. Landing on his body, Roy quickly took in the positions of the three men surrounding him before nocking another three and sending them through their necks to swift death. Thunderous sounds of gunshots echoed through the screeching winds.

“Roof cleared,” Jason’s voice crackled through the comms. 

“Floor three cleared. Commencing search,” Roy answered, kicking down the door and checking his flanks, which were unfortunately teeming with trigger-friendly life. Roy worked through the crowds, switching to short, sharp and intensely quick drawing and shooting to match the pace of pistols. Roy moved in the direction goons spilled out off, blasting through doors and skidding down bare-boned steps to reach the very figurative idea of a centre.

The rapidly intensifying sound of gunfire thundered in the same direction Roy was running towards, and Roy commed a quick “coming to you” before busting through a final door, to meet what Roy would call a “giant fucking hole.”

To be fair, this was an architectural intention. The centre of floors 2nd and up were cut out like the middle of a donut, fenced around the rectangular hole, a skylight on the roof shining down on the milling workers on the first floor. Men and women in blue haircaps and white gowns and masks either stumbled around or stood stock still in fear. Jason had cleared his way down to Roy’s floor, and with a nod at each other, shot their grapples and rappelled down to the depths below.

They both landed either sides of rows of tables filled with beakers, burners and of course, that green-black powder. Roy wrinkled his nose. 

Several goons recovered from the shock to shoot wildly, a loudly buzzing machine gun whirring in a distance. Roy kneed the closest, worked his way through the mob with bow-bashes and precise arrows, knocking them down until he came up to a carbine carrier stood in the middle of the room, lit harshly from the above skylight. The man hulked over him, eyes masked with goggles, meaty fingers clasping the handle of the heavy arm. Roy chose to go low-the only way tall people can’t go-drawing an arrow to pierce him through the bottom of his chin-

The meat pudding of a man made a wide step backwards, and pushing the head of the carbine to Roy’s face.

A loud _crack_ resounded, and the bow string slipped from Roy’s grasp. 

The arrow stuck into the meat of his shoulder, enough for him to sag to his side, gun clunking to the ground. Roy slapped a palm around his intact head, blinking unbelievably at how not dead he was. He scrambled from underneath to witness Jason clutching on his foot for dear mercy, and the man’s shattered goggles dig into his face.

The meat man reached for the trigger on the gun, and both Roy and Jason backed up and climbed up on the 2nd floor railings before bullets sprayed across the floor, piercing glass and ricocheting off floors. The meat man heaved a foot onto the butt end of the carbine, pushing down to pivot the business end up towards them. Roy darted like a damn flea across the railings, letting the man uselessly pause before registering where he’d gone. Jason did the same, attempting to aim his gun whenever catching the meat man off guard, but it was never long enough to take a shot.

“Red,” Roy shouted, then ghosted the edge of a particularly weak spray. The quantity of bullets almost immediately picked up, and Roy rappelled along the railings, keeping close enough to lead the man on. Jason got the message and ran to the opposite of Roy’s position, with a clear shot of his back.

Jason wasted no time wasting him with a swift bullet to the head. And a few more. That skull was _hard_.

The meat man toppled to the ground with an aborted spray, and Jason and Roy dropped back to the first floor in peace. 

Feet shifting through bullets and bullet cases, Jason made his way back to the tables, milling through the items that weren’t shattered to pieces. Roy took to inspecting the meat man for a moment, prodding at the contraption straddled to his back. With a mighty push, Roy rolled him to a side only slightly, to witness a green glowing cylinder peeking through black casing.

“It’s fear toxin, all right,” Jason grunted in a distance, and Roy looked up to see him inspecting some kind of heavy injecting contraption mounted to a cylinder of green liquid. Roy looked back at the meat man, inspecting the unnatural green of his eyes peeking through a broken lense. This man was fueled by fear. Roy sincerely hoped that his hefty form was pre-green goo.

“Yeah okay, I can see where this could go,” Roy mulled, wondering what the hell was the benefit of getting skinny junkies addicted on fear. Though, he supposed, all forms of the body had its use.

Roy shuddered.

“Hey,” Jason shouted in a distance, and Roy stood to walk over, thinking he was beckoned, only to see a group of H workers shuddering in a corner. Several were caught in a crossfire, bleeding out as Jason negotiated, slowly stepping closer to the group with raised arms.

Jason worked his magic, his gentle coaxing most juxtaposed to the growly tonality of his helmet-processed voice, but somehow, he got them the calm down enough to step closer to one of the victims, ripping off a bit of his undershirt to form a tourniquet. Roy could only smile, and made himself useful by looting the dead bodies for anything useful. 

Roy could only grimace, noting how their standard uniforms and bullet-proof vests improperly fit the varying forms of these ‘bodyguards,’ who were more of ‘street rats’ trussed up to be maximum protection. Roy pulled back the sleeves of a particularly hefty man to see signature tracks. No wonder the Scarecrow afforded so many. He didn’t.

“You’re under my protection now, you understand?” Jason spoke, affirmatively pointing at the rows of worktables. “Arsenal.”

“Yeah?” Roy walked over, watching the men and women rush to their desks, almost to immediately restart work. If Roy were to be honest, this was a disappointingly small work crew for such a heavily guarded building.

“This is ours now,” Jason spoke, bringing up his tablet. “I’ll call one of my divisions to cleanup and start guarding. It doesn’t look like their back-up’s coming though,” Jason’s voice lowered into a murmur, his tablet flashing the blue, white and grays of iPhone text conversations. Roy heard several phones ping and screens light up somewhat close to their owners’ bodies.

“Now _that’s_ climactic,” Roy grinned, peering over Jason’s shoulder to speed read conversations with him. With enough rooting around, they could pinpoint messages to several other facilities, all of which Jason was tracking the IPs of while simultaneously digging into their Google Maps histories.

“We’ve got some locations. We can root out the one south to us next. Meanwhile, we should analyse this,” Jason spoke, holding up the large syringe. “I’m positive this isn’t pure toxin. There’s dust settling in the bottom,” Jason shook it, and Roy watched the particulates snow within the cylinder. 

“It’s coming premixed,” Roy spoke, unsurprised. “Of course. Then reduced to powder and repackaged,” Roy swiped a bit of residue of the tablet, noting it’s black-flecked green texture. “No wonder it’s so black. It’s cut to hell and twice reduced.” _Still pretty fucking powerful though,_ the words went unsaid. Roy rolled the green duct between his gloved finger-tips.

“Yes, that’s why we can’t just keep capturing the flags. We need the main production itself, Roy,” Jason looked at him, then a bit apprehensively at his gloves. “I need Scarecrow.” 

Roy stared long and hard at Jason, who avoided his eyes to continue flicking through his tablet. When Scarecrow escaped Arkham, Jason would have definitely tracked him down, like he would with anyone who threatened his status as the Prince of Gotham.

“I’m sure you’ve got something on him,” Roy coaxed, placing a hand on Jason’s shoulder. Jason looked up, and Roy could only see the blank expression of the hood.

“Right?” Roy asked, tone more imploring than accusatory. Jason was _good_. Anything that slipped by him would have to be the machinations of a force much, much greater than themselves.

The slight buzz of a zipline squeaked above them.

The movement was fast-invisible, almost-but the intention was clear as day. Roy sensed the sharp tip of a claw skim the leather of his suit before he could discern the enemy, mind instead focused on twisting around, fletching an arrow and shooting blindly into whatever was before him. A black suit-clad body darted upwards to cling onto a railing-and how woe it be, to now stand where the meat man stood. 

Roy kept his guard up, hitching the next arrow on his bow as he scanned the scene before him. Two of them, holding personalised weapons and wearing shiny gold-on-black owl masks.

Talons.

“For FUCK’S SAKE!” Jason yelled, swiveled beside him, busting two shots that only cracked concrete. 

“You said, no backup?” Roy teased, still processing the sheer terrors that stood before them. 

“Fuck off,” Jason seethed, and Roy heard another two shots boom to his right. Roy’s Talon darted towards him, long golden claws aimed for his face, and wasn’t that nice, a melee opponent for the bowman. Roy shot, watching the arrow slightly skid the bizarre brow of the owl mask as the Talon swerved, landing right next to Roy’s much unguarded left. 

Roy quickly turned around, nocking an arrow as he backed up-right onto Jason’s back. Both quickly shifted to properly pressed their backs together. Another Talon popped to Roy’s right, peering down at them while rubbing some strange defibrillator-like device between his hands.

“Nice knowing you, baby,” Roy whispered, pulling his bowstring back nice and tight. 

“Yeah well. I bet you won’t be gone for long, you mediocre archer,” Jason replied, the sound of two hammers clicking back echoing through the atrium.

And if Roy hadn’t taken a moment to regard their new threat on his right, he wouldn’t have seen an iridescent red-orange-pink cloth encase the Talon’s head, suffocating them to their knees. 

At the sheer look of surprise in the body language of his Talon,, Roy shot his bow just as Jason’s shots echoed, back pushing into Jason as Jason himself pushed back in recoil. His arrow stuck into the chest of his Talon, a little far from the heart or neck but a triumph all the same. The suffocating Talon still struggled beside them, and Jason helped with a quick shot to their heart. A beauty, their beauty, emerged from behind the body, taking a moment to sort his hair back into their perfect curls.

“Dear GOD,” Roy breathed, watching Dick vault over the railing and descend, not quite minding it when his Talon stuck a claw into his face. Roy aimed a quick kick at the Talon’s side, pleased when it connected, causing them to stumble backwards. Roy made himself quick-ran forward, bow-bashed them as they were getting up, then shot one into their neck. Roy mentally cheered.

Jason sighed in relief behind him, and Roy turned to look at him kicking the Talon’s body uselessly.

“Mediocre archer?” Roy asked, mouth cocked in a lazy smile. 

“Fuck. FUCK!!!” Jason screamed, growly brass resonating as he kicked the body again, much harder this time, then bent down to loot the body. Roy supposed he should loot his, but fuck him if he didn’t feel insulted at being ignored.

“Jason,” Roy called out, a little too tired to be dealing with the signature Angery Jason Blowout™.

“And what do you think you’re doing?!?!” Jason ignored Roy _again_ , throwing his hands up to wildly gesture at the preening beauty. Dick looked up, annoyed.

“Saving your ass?”

“How did you get in here?” Jason brisk-walked to Dick, tipping the beauty’s head around to check for injuries.

“Your own zipline,” Dick’s face was scrunched in irritation, which looked undeniably cute. He raised his skirts to show a large tear, likely from rope burn. Jason physically backed up to match how taken aback he looked.

“You did _not_ ,” Roy was smiling, admiring the sheer guts it took to do… _all of that_. Shoot down the zipline with only his skirts, then suffocate a fucking Talon. 

“I did,” Dick’s mouth was set in a thin line, sounding more self-assured than boasting. He walked into Jason’s space, standing straight to look right into Jason’s eyes. A staring contest began-a flabbergasted, furious, stubborn and more importantly helmet-masked Jason against a confident, annoyed, irritated and nevertheless strong-willed Dick. Yeah, that wouldn’t end well. Perhaps, would never _end_.

Roy walked over to press his chest onto Dick’s back, settling his hands onto Dick’s exposed stomach. Dick sighed into the touch, relenting.

“Asshat,” Dick spoke, letting Roy rest his chin on Dick’s head. “You made me lose.”

“Yep,” Roy simply said, watching Jason eye him with slight apprehension before encircling his arms around them both. Jason took off his helmet and pressed a chaste kiss onto Roy’s lips, then Dick’s. 

“So, what were those,” Dick asked after, eyeing the Talon bodies. Jason released his grip to stare at them with an indiscernible grimace.

“Yeah well.” Jason walked over to his Talon, kicking it again. 

“Well. Fuck.”

~

There was something about being taken on a bed of Heroin that seemed ultra dangerous.

It wasn’t a bed necessarily, it was the dust that was constantly etched into the surfaces in this broken building. Dick felt the grain settle into his bare back as Jason pressed his thigh onto Dick’s cock. Dick _moaned_.

“We gotta christen the place, Dickie,” Jason merely said, emotion mysterious under that domino mask. Dick wanted to just rip it off, to see the eyes of the man he’d been working so long to reach. Dick supposed, he could settle for his unofficial title of the Red Hood’s personal consort, _and_ the Arsenal’s.

Roy softly caressed his hair, pressing kisses on his hairline and whispering sweet nothings into his ear. At how Dick shuddered at the intensely close sounds, Roy dipped his tongue into Dick’s ear, and Dick screamed at the sheer shock of pleasure.

“That’s right, Dickie,” Jason spoke, lifting Dick’s lower half to smack his ass. “We’re not just fucking. We’re _christening_. Be as fucking loud as you can.”

And so Dick moaned and groaned and screamed through it all, as Jason pressed his long, thick cock into him, even as Roy slid his full length down his throat. He screamed and screamed till he came in thick, hot spurts, deciding that ripping those skirts was worth it.


	3. Chapter 3

“I tracked Scarecrow the moment he got out,” Jason spoke, staring down at his tablet that displayed a map with various coloured routes. An arrow whizzed by his head as he tapped on a route, taking a moment to kick a mook in the kidney before turning back to eye the street names. 

“What happened?” Roy spoke, busy performing various body contortions to get in line of sight of his enemies. The floors were cleared quickly, and they ran up a flight of stairs, Jason’s gun ready and Roy’s bow trained, shooting before they could see.

“Lost him. He was last in Park Row, signal died,” Men fell down and through the strange interior of this factory. It was a fish gutting factory next to the Gotham docks, so the building was a giant roofed warehouse, with flights of stairs running the circumference of the rectangle floors. It just made bodies slipping through the cracks too easy. 

“I went to where he was,” Jason pulled back the hammer of his gun with his teeth, and shot them point blank.

“You couldn’t find him?” Dick’s whisper rang through their comms earpiece, and Jason looked up as the reached the top floor, seeing Dick perched on roof scaffolding and waving. Dick had quickly explained his agility as “Pole Climbing 101,” but Jason found who he was the moment he made the connection between names “Dick” and “Richard”. Richard Grayson was his childhood fantasy, he’d witnessed his tragedy, sitting next to Willis with popcorn rolling off his slack jawed mouth. Perhaps that’s what’s led him to letting a clearly skilled acrobat cover them from above.

“He completely abracadabra-ed. Poof,” Jason gestured at Dick, and he could detect Dick’s annoyance from the distance.

“My circus had bad experiences with stupid rabbit-pulling muh-gi-shans,” Dick dragged out his syllables, and Jason chuckled, watching the beauty aim his grapple at a mook, shoot, and catch it in the loops of his neck chains.

“Nice,” Jason spoke, then pointed up. “Jerk the gun up.” Jason heard the upward zip of rope over the comms as he watched the mook shoot up to dangle on scaffolding. Roy threw his arms up in a quick “hoorah” before reducing another three mooks to dust. 

It was disgustingly easy, how one addition to the team sped the process of mopping the floor with bodies. Dick nimbly ran along the scaffolding, making a mockery of tightrope walkers, stringing up anyone that dared to move under his trajectory. Roy crowd controlled with his three-arrow-trick, and Jason put down his tablet to clean what remained. 

Of course, sooner than later, a hefty man holding a giant gatling carbine stomped into view. He seemed a bit more sickly-his flesh was white-ish and shiny with sweat, and Jason noted how he barely grasped the handle of his gun.

“Does every warehouse have a meat man?” Roy quipped, quickly sticking an arrow into the, as Roy described, ‘meat man.’ “What is this, a video game?”

“Scarecrow played Bioshock. I’m betting on it,” Jason replied, cracking a few shots to his shoulder before he could prep the carbine. “Dickie,” Jason called out, finger to his comms unit, but the beauty was already on it. Dick shot a grapple to hitch the mechanism on the back of the meat man, and jerked it up-the line moved _slow_ , and the man had the chance to reach for the trigger, pilling bullets before them. Jason witnessed how the gun’s trajectory curved upwards and upwards, towards Dickie, and both he and Roy quickly aimed their weapons at his hands, and fired. 

The carbine dropped. Dick yanked the cord up again, and the body zoomed up, left to hang on a beam. They’d sigh in relief, if they didn’t know what was next.

Talons emerged from the shadowy corners of the roof, eyeing the three with bunched up shoulders and clenched fists.

“Six. Fuckin’ overkill,” Jason murmured, cocking his guns. 

“We’ll be fine,” Roy tossed his hair back in a sleazy smile, then nocked his bow. 

“Yeah,” Dick’s whisper was nigh confident, and Jason looked up to find him deviously smiling while eyeing one to his immediate right. 

And at once, they moved. 

Jason cracked two shots at a Talon training a sniper rifle at Roy, watching the red dot skew, if only slightly. It returned to train at Jason-until Dick swung above to kick them in the head, and the Talon lost his grip, letting the rifle fall to the ground. Jason took the opportunity to place two shots into the Talon’s head-Jason watched at least one skim their mask before he had to duck, hearing the zip of a knife fly above him. 

Jason turned to his left and immediately cracked a shot-the Talon staggered back, clutching their knee. Jason carefully backed up, letting them aim a few knives at him, dodging nearly all-one skimmed his own knee, likely in revenge. As soon as the Talon motioned to get more, Jason sprinted forward and pistol whipped them, and as they stumbled, took the carefully calculated opportunity to bend down and choke them unconcious.

This did however allow time to be struck with an arrow. 

His left hand began to bleed profusely from it’s wound, and let go of the Talon and skidded out of the way of an arrow aimed at his right hand. Jason looked up at their christ-like meat man, and sighed.

“Y’all are poetic,” Jason sighed, then used his one functioning hand to train a gun at the archer Talon above. He cocked the gun with his teeth-then paused, looking back at his chokeheld Talon. Jason couldn’t discern if he was alive. They needed a larger population group for their...experiment. Jason discharged the bullet into the ground, then ran for cover under a broken table, switching his magazine from steel to rubber. Jason peeked back out-and witnessed the most wonderful sight.

Dick swung into view, withdrawing his grapple rope while mid-air and _somersaulted_ , before aiming for the beam occupied by the archer Talon. The Talon led their arrow forward, nearly letting go of their bowstring until Roy landed a shot in his elbow, which was unfortunately full of padding, but fortunate enough to distract them. Dick leg thumped into the archer’s gut, completely sending the Talon flying backwards, off the roof and into the H-ridden floor below. It was like witnessing Dick on the pole for the first time all over again, but with _blood_.

Jason quickly shot his grapple out to roll the Talon back to him and chokeheld them behind cover, letting the owl writhe and thrash till they passed out with a snore. 

Jason rushed back into the scene, watching Roy work those magic fingers on his bow, and Dick swing like the born and bred trapeze artist he was, taking every chance to kick, soar and somersault through the air. Dick jerked back his grapple mid-air to crack the butt of the gun across an stumbling, arrow-stricken Talon’s temple. Lights out.

The Talon’s body slipped off the railing quicker than Dick must have anticipated, and Dick dove down to grab them, freefalling. Jason could hear Roy gasp-Jason’s own heart stopping-but the falling beauty grabbed the falling Talon and shot his grapple to the beams above, sailing into the air as he gently dropped the snoring Talon to the ground. Roy and Jason stood still, slackjawed.

“You are AMAZING,” Roy shouted, arms wide open in victory, and Dick took is as a sign to swing towards Roy, skirts billowing before crashing into Roy’s arms. They kissed wildly, Jason could see their tongues poke within each other’s cheeks.

“Dumbass,” Jason made a swift kick to a Talon’s face, then sprinted over to them to pull Dick from Roy’s arms.

“Fool, you’re supposed to stay up,” Jason chided while sliding a hand down Dick’s back to grope his perfect ass. A throwing knife whizzed past them, escaping with a light duck. Dick lifted Jason’s helmet slightly, and pressed a sweet, chaste kiss to Jason’s lips.

“Yeah, yeah, Grumpy,” Dick smiled, before shooting his grapple and ascending back to the beams. Jason marked the last two, reaching for his grapple for a good grapple-kick takedown, but found himself patting an empty holster uselessly-Jason looked up, eyeing a very pleased Dick holding two grapple guns. 

“Need some target practice?” Dick asked, winking. Jason widened his eyes, then settled for a mask-hidden smirk, deciding to forgive the pickpocketing, for what Jason believed they were about to do. The two Talons pounced towards them, melee weapons ready, and Dick quickly shot his grapples at them, hooking them by the loops of their kevlar suits. Jason aimed his gun at one, and Roy aimed his bow at another.

They had enough alive Talons anyway.

In what was possibly the finest moment of Gotham’s Mob Boss history, their shots synched, and two Talon heads exploded into smithereens, blood, bones and eyes scattering to the ground. Jason took the moment to aim his tablet camera at the hanging bodies, taking snaps in various angles. If he can’t have two heads in a bag, he could have two headless hanging bodies in picture form. Future blackmail, if you will.

“Eugh,” Dick tied the men to a beam, then took a moment to flick a spec of blood off his wrist.

“This is all not good for my skin,” Dick grumbled, before dropping back down. He was careful not to step on the puddles of grime, H dust and blood, lifting his torn skirts to avoid brushing the bodies. 

“Welcome to Gotham,” Jason smiled behind the secrecy of his helmet, then turned to Roy. Roy gave his signature sleazy smile, and drew three bug-tipped arrows.

The devices latched onto their suits, blinking. Once they’d wake up, they’d simply follow them home.

And find that burlap-donning freak once and for all.

~

Safe to say, they weren’t very good at not-killing.

Two of their moles croaked, one on the spot from an arrow wound that Jason’s hand too suffered, another stumbling wildly before succumbing to their concussion. Roy shot an arrow clean into their skull the moment he understood they were choking on their own vomit, with no conscious ability to stop.

Yet their last hope prevailed-the one Jason had safely choked behind cover. The Talon didn’t even take the time to check their bodies-instead creeping towards the bustling sounds of The Red Hoods slowly filling, cleaning and occupying the first floor of the warehouse, and immediately deciding to make their getaway.

Roy, Jason and Dick quickly trailed after, Dick struggling a little with grappling the roofs of Gotham, as opposed to the roof beams that were much closer to one another. But with a little...handsy instruction by him and Jason, Dick flew by their sides, daresay better than Roy and Jason ever has been and could be. 

“We’re in Park Row,” Jason spoke between his teeth. Roy hummed, feeling his hackles raise ever so slightly. They were on a hunch-Jason’s hunch-that the Scarecrow was under not only financial protection, as seen by their mysterious appearances and attacks for what seemed like a purely Scarecrow misdoing, but also physical protection. Roy tended to agree with Jason’s gut, but they were leading them right to what could be the Court’s lair. 

“I don’t think they’re going to Court headquarters,” Jason spoke, a thumb flicking on the screen as he rode through the air. 

“Why?” Dick spoke up, the beauty’s intelligent eyes darting between the both of them.

“I know Park Row. I know Owls. They’re not there,” Jason simply said, and that was that. Roy yearned for their mission here to end so he could grab Jason, haul ass to Star City and relinquish the right of command Roy had been giving to Jason. Show him who’s the boss too.

The Talon stopped immediately at what Jason described where the Scarecrow “poofed,” and dug his glove claws into the side of a crumbling, abandoned building, sinking into what Roy would describe as vanilla pudding-esque plaster. Their fingers hooked up, and pulled their arm back. Roy never saw a seam in the wall, or a pair of hinges, but a door opened nonetheless. Just as the Talon stepped through, Roy heard a quiet clink, and the Talon slumped into the sticky white.

Roy turned to look at Jason unscrew a silencer. With quick nods, they descended within.

It was a classic underground bomb shelter-narrow, winding steps into a low-roofed wide-space. What was interesting was in how it looked like some kind of abandoned warehouse with lines of scaffolding shelves that was slowly taken over by nature, with all the roots poking and peeking through the concrete. It wasn’t all that desolate though-some rows of shelves were stocked with crates, and syringes and needles decorated what looked like an inbuilt counter-top–

Roy vaulted over the counter to find a rusty, old cashier machine. He slowly pressed a finger into one of the buttons. It popped back up.

“Was this some kind of...shop?” Roy asked, marveling the dusting interior. He vaulted back over, pressed a finger into a wall of crates.

“Roy,” Jason spoke, voice wavering slightly. He pulled out one of the crates, and within, laid stacks and stacks of ziplock bags of Holy Terror. 

“Oh,” Roy gasped, feeling a euphoria not dissimilar to the rush of sweet H within his veins rise to tingle his brain and colour his cheeks. Finally. 

“Can I say, jackpot?” Dick grinned, then laid against the wall of crates to pose, as if modeling to advertise the drugs. Roy’s smile widened, sauntering over to pushed Dick against the crates and kiss him silly. The warm slide of their tongue intermixed with the smiling corners of their lips was reward of its own.

“Dumbasses,” there was that word again, and Jason pressed his chest onto Roy’s back, arms encircling them both. He lifted his helmet to press kisses onto Roy’s neck, then lightly pulled Roy from Dick to nip at Dick’s lips lightly.

“You know, this is a mission,” Jason remarked as he pulled back, sliding a hand over Roy’s chest to squeeze a pec. Roy tossed his head back, moaning. 

“This isn’t an Enid Blyton-teens-find-an-eerie-castle-and-pose,” Jason was speaking, but his hands wandered everywhere else, everywhere Roy wanted them to be. Dick pressed himself against Roy, sliding a thigh between Roy’s legs. They took turns kissing, nice and wet and sloppy-

A wet breath heaved. One that was most certainly not theirs.

Roy quickly turned around, drew his bow and shot, hearing the slice of thick flesh before Roy’s eyes adjusted-to see another meat man, bare-handed but taller and bigger than before. It’s face was more than mangled with roots, with moss and sticks lathered all over, and Roy was getting sick and tired of all these _varieties_. Was this one bred under the damp roots of the infiltrating trees? Did its human self writhe, high on Holy Terror, in the peat and moss until it was embedded in the folds of their growing piles of skin? Roy shuddered. Again, he was sick of this.

“It never ends!” Dick screamed in a distance, leaping on shelves for higher ground, readying himself to pounce. Jason quickly cracked a gun at the man’s nose, causing him to stumble backwards onto Dick’s perched shelf. Dick pounced onto the meat man, legs and arms encircling his neck and head in what Roy would call a double chokehold. The meat man reached up to grab at Dick, and Roy quickly drew three, focused arrows, shooting them into his hand. Jason took the other hand, then his kneecaps, and Dick huffed and puffed until the man finally slacked a little, falling to the ground.

Dick leapt off in time for Jason and Roy to rail on bullets after arrows after bullet till the fleshy thing was well and truly dead.

Gasping, Dick stumbled towards Roy, slumping onto his arm. Roy held Dick steady, but slid to the ground anyway, panting himself. Jason stood in his spot, likely looking around with Detective Vision.

“I swear to god, you two,” Jason breathed, walking over to them, looking down but not making any move to sit. “You both make me act _stupid_.”

“I think the phrase is, ‘lower your inhibitions’,” Dick quipped between breaths.

“Yeah. Stupid,” Jason retorted, but Roy could hear the smile in his voice. He watched Jason vault over the counter-top, and open some door behind. Roy turned to press kisses into Dick’s temple. It had him giggling.

“You should see this,” Jason inevitably called, and both men sighed as they got onto their heels. 

Peering into the room, Roy saw what he’d call a Cold War decoder’s room. A typewriter machine, a fax phone and a radio all sat neatly on a dusty, wrecked wooden table. What should be a wall of weaponry was instead a long table of neatly laid knives, swords and darts, and most importantly, an assortment of sniper rifles. This was the Talon’s...bunker of sorts.

Jason was fiddling with the radio, then produced a pen, peeled back a sleeve and wrote frequencies onto his wrist.

“Jason,” Roy spoke, uneasy. “Jason, what are you doing.”

“Pinpointing the location of the Court of Owls. Where Scarecrow is,” Jason spoke, purposefully keeping his eyes on his tablet as he entered frequency numbers. 

“Okay. Why,” Roy patiently asked, knowing the answer already. They didn’t need the Court of Owls. They didn’t need Scarecrow. They already had stacks of what they needed.

“Because this isn’t over, Roy,” Jason swerved around to looks at Roy square in the eye, and he could feel Dick shrink behind him, clutching onto his suit.

“Jason. We don’t need Scarecrow anymore. Our biggest threat is the Court but with our armies, we can handle it-” 

“No Roy. No, I need the real deal.” Jason paced, eyes back to the tablet as several colours lit up his face. There was something faltering in his voice-the way his eyes darted back and forth, attempting to read Roy’s face, was highly disconcerting. 

“Jason. It’s fine. We have enough to last-”

“For how long? If we want this to succeed, Roy, we need the damn toxin itself. If we can’t make anything, we’ll be done before long.” Roy gawked.

“Jason, we have time. Look at this!” Roy waved his arms at their stashes of crates peeking through the door, clearly enough to last years. Roy didn’t get it-was it Jason’s intuition speaking, or his pure paranoia? Roy decided latter, with a more primary reasoning of wanting to eliminate Scarecrow once and for all. Which was not. The mission.

“We have enough time to _figure this out_ , Jason. Just,” Roy stepped towards his other, placing a firm arm on his shoulder and tipping Jason’s head up with another. Jason sighed.

Then raised a hand to take off his helmet, and peel off his domino.

Roy reveled in those hazel greens, those slight dashes of chimeric blue. Roy must look astounded, for Jason smirked, and Roy could finally once again see the corners of his eyes crinkle with it.

“Oh god. Pretty,” Dick whispered, reaching a hand out to lightly trace a finger at the corner of Jason’s eyes. Now it was Jason’s turn to look flabbergasted, and greeted Dick’s fingers with a light, shy kiss.

“Dick, Roy,” Jason breathed, eyes imploring at the both of them. It was a new expression for a man who just took.

“Jay,” Roy replied, tone lightly teasing. Jason’s lips turned up in a soft, sad smile. 

“Roy, do you know what I’m doing?” Jason asked, voice gruff yet gentle. Roy scrunched his eyebrows, confused.

“What?”

“Do you know what I’m doing?” Jason asked again, and upon silence, lowered his eyes in a complex expression Roy could not enravel. Dick stood between them, eyes darting back and forth.

The handy gears of processing a situation skidded to a stop in Roy’s brain, as Jason turned back to his tablet, tapping away.

~

So, that confirmed Dick’s suspicions.

Dick had always noted Jason’s gentler inclinations, or the way he treated capturing facilities like mere side achievements, his mind purely focused on the damned Scarecrow. He wasn’t oblivious to the way Jason let Dick into his life, possibly willing to let a prostitute think they’re the queen of Red Hoods if it meant keeping them off the streets, and out of sleazy nightclubs. 

He watched Roy and Jason pace around each other, one uneasy, another intensely guilty. A small, almost passive-aggressive fight ensued, wherein Jason very painfully convinced Roy to bring an army of the Arsenal over for a raid. Dick decided that was more than enough, using the excuse of injuries, torn skirts and bad skin to pull them out and back into Red Hood territory. 

They fell into bed-not to bang, they were very much too sleepy for that. They instead snored their asses off, Dick cradled between them, wrapped between two men he was coming to love, and hoped was loved back.

He watched Jason slide out of bed two hours later to walk out the hotel room, a pack of cigarettes in one hand, tablet in another. Please. Roy wasn’t blind. Dick wasn’t blind.

Dick wasn’t blind to any of it from the very beginning.

He’d tried to convince Bruce so many times, splat statistics across his multiple-monitor desktop setup to show what genuine _good_ the Red Hoods brough to Gotham. Bruce himself, stuck in D.C. and far from home stubbornly dismissed him, noting their various misdemeanours and crimes, Red Hood himself a psychotic homicidal maniac. Three-severed-heads-in-a-bag maniac.

“But look. Minors arrested for drug possession has dwindled to single digits. Single. Digits!” Dick had waved his arms animatedly, pointing desperately at his tablet of infographics. Barbara stared amusedly at them from her desk-she’d gathered the data herself, the data visualisation was Dick’s machination.

“Hrng,” Bruce spoke, and that wasn’t a ‘hrng’ of consideration, that was a ‘hrng’ of pure irritation. Bruce swerved back to face his computer, absolute in his disbelief.

Now, Dick sipped his morning coffee, watching Bruce grumble as he scrolled through Dick’s written report on his phone. Dick thoroughly enjoyed the way his eyebrows raised, then scrunched, then raised again in actual emotion. Perhaps he would have had more luck the first time round if he had a magic tablet. 

“So. Your suggestion is to…” Bruce knitted his eyebrows, looking up to eye Dick. “Provide back-up.”

“No. My suggestion is to target the Court, not the Hoods or the Arsenal,” Dick corrected, then indulged himself in the mountain of whip cream on the top of his Toasted Triple Mocha Frappuccino with soy milk and extra shot of caramel. Sex with Jay and Roy was great. His favourite Starbucks drink and Bruce grimacing in acceptance was phenomenal.

“And not let any friendly fire occur with the Red Hoods and the Arsenal.”

“No. There is no friendly fire. The Red Hoods and the Arsenal are our enemies.”

Bruce squinted at him. Then looked down at his phone. Then back at Dick. Bruce stared at him, jaw grim. It reminded him of Jason.

“I will authorise the raid of the Court of Owls, under the specific objective of capturing the Scarecrow,” Bruce spoke, then turned off his phone. He sat up straight, picking up his hot, pure black coffee and took a sip. Dick grimaced.

“How do you drink that?” Dick asked, genuinely disgusted.

“How do you sleep next to two major drug lords you’ve come to adore?” Bruce spoke, expression blank, but tone strangely amused. Dick shrugged, both unsure of the answer and confused at Bruce’s choice of response. Bruce merely shook his head.

Dick supposed, Bruce was never intrusive about his eclectic choice of partners.

~

When the afternoon sun set in, Jason got back to the room, peeking from his tablet to see Dickie and Roy attempt to untangle themselves from one another. While Dick finally scampered off bed to a bathroom, Roy rose and chose to wrap his arms around Jason from behind, pressing sweet kisses down his spine. Roy angled himself to look imploringly at Jason, and Jason felt strangely forgiven. Or perhaps, Roy didn’t want to fight. Whatever. Jason decided to put the damn device down and kiss his lover silly.

“Babes,” Dickie’s voice rang before them, and they took a break to look-Dick sashayed in front of them in what Jason would call a minimized, gold-less version of the dress Dick first wore when they met. A v-shaped pacific-blue mantle over a long-sleeved, cropped dark-blue blouse, matched with an floor-length dark-blue skirt with two wide leg slits. The fabric was silken, most certainly not as big and poofy as his previous dresses.

“That’s not combat uniform,” Jason simply said, and Dick pouted. Jason stared, but Dick continued to pout, and something about that screwed with Jason’s brain.

“You need to keep high, anyway. Just dodge projectiles as you do, Dickie. That would, actually work,” Jason mused over the darkness of the blue, near-black, realising he could probably hide quite well in the dark. 

The raid was simple-the Red Hoods and the Arsenal would charge in, shakedown the front while Roy, him and Dick would sneak past and find Scarecrow. Upon any significant danger, Jason would pull the image of two hanging Talons, and make a case for how exactly threatening he is. Jason had no illusions of taking over the Court, or making any successful deals with them, but he could certainly make them hesitate. Long enough to get Scarecrow out, toss him in Arkham, and put his own men on guard at his cell if he absolutely had to.

Then, he’d destroy any inkling of Hysteria, and obtain the purest fear toxin he could find to make an antidote. And somehow deal with Roy in the aftermath.

He was the Red Hood. Mob boss on the outside, anti-heroic vigilante buried deep beneath. And deeply in love with both Roy and Dickie.

Till the moment came, they soared in-the Red Hoods and the Arsenal took the floor of this strange, amphitheatre-like cave-carved court by storm, skirmishing and bashing through Talon after Talon with some success. Jason, Roy and Dickie meanwhile made their way through the cave system, running along rows of makeshift offices and cubicles-it was honestly all quite hilarious, an actual cabinet’s office building re-represented in cave-y, owl-ey format. 

“Where is he???” Roy exclaimed as they ran down corridors, empty as every Talon was busy at the amphitheatre. Jason’s giant hunch was Scarecrow would be hustled away, or hustle himself away amidst the chaos. But as they turned around one corridor after another, they realised that might not be the case.

“Jason,” Dick whispered, pointing to a sickly, glowing green coming from a tunnel that led right to the amphitheatre. 

“Oh god,” Jason’s eyes widened, and all three immediately broke into a sprint towards the source.

Loud cackling rang through the cacophony.

In the midst of the mass of squirming men, women and Talons, the Scarecrow stood on the palms of meat men raising him into the air, laughing maniacally. He raised a clasped hand into the air, shaking it with veracity, and Jason saw the sickly green and glossy gleam of a test tube full of toxin peek through his gloved hands.

Pure toxin. Jason bet on it.

“DO YOU WANT IT?” he screamed, taunting by waving the test tube tantalisingly close to one Arsenal. The Arsenal nearly grabbed it, but was immediately trampled by a meat man. The effect of these hulking men were obvious-with the Red Hoods and Arsenal thinning as it is from trained Talons, nevermind being mowed down and stepped on by the fleshy hulks. 

“No,” Roy whispered, and Jason immediately felt like the shittiest man in the world. Roy didn’t want this. Roy shouldn’t have had to...Jason shook his head. 

“Dick, Roy, distract him. I’ll snatch it, and crack one in his fucking _face_ ,” Jason seethed, and Roy nodded, jaw in a rare tight, grim set. 

They rappelled down-Dick swung before Scarecrow, who immediately began shooting at large, oversized syringe full of Hysteria at him. Roy began shooting at Scarecrow, letting arrow on arrow skimm past, making the burlap-clad man dance. Jason swung down, angling himself closer and closer to snatch the test tube-

A mass of warmth thudded into his side, followed by something unforgivingly sharp. 

Jason’s every instinct worked to tear himself away from his attacker, letting go of his grapple to kick them off him. Talon. The dagger halfway stuck in his side had a meandering blade, one that Jason knew would cause further injury if he pulled it out. 

Jason landed within the mass of writhing men-and was immediately clocked in the head by own of his own men, then brutally bashed against by a meat man. Pieces of his helmet crumbled under the force as he buckled back, unable to stand upright. He felt like he was drowning in a sea of men, being pulled further and further into the depths of hell.

No. Not again.

Jason pulled himself up by the back of a meat man, whipping out a boot knife to emphatically stab him in the neck. As the hulking flesh fell, Jason moved to another, and another, either dodging or taking the thuds of fists as they came. He made his way to the main ring where Scarecrow stood, unholstering a gun to aim at the fucking bastard. To think, he was going to keep him alive.

That was, until Roy clambered from the masses himself, and kneed Scarecrow in the face. 

The man squealed as he was knocked to a side, Roy quickly wrenching the tube from him. He held the tube up in the air, looking at the green toxin like it was god.

“Roy!” Jason called out, feeling panic build within him. Roy looked at him, then drew back, apprehensive. Shit. _Shit_. Jason shouldn’t have gone all ‘what do you think I’m really doing’ on Roy, for his favourite archer now looked at him with a kind of confused hesitance that he’d never think would be directed at himself in Jason’s entire lives.

“Roy,” Jason pleaded, an arm reaching towards him. “Roy, give it to me.”

“Oh, Jason,” Roy’s face went slack with a bittersweet smile. “I think I know what you’re doing.”

~

Roy wasn’t blind.

He wasn’t blind to the way men and women in his own streets back in Star City went buckwild, reliving every terrifying moment of their life only to take that stuff again, addicted to the fearful rush. He wasn’t blind to the consequences of their ‘trade route’- rather, he’d been able to ignore it, until those hulking meat men came into view.

“I’m not doing this to my city, Jay,” Roy spoke, clutching onto the fear toxin for dear life. The one thing they’d need for an antidote. “And you’re not gonna do this to yours.”

Roy pocketed the toxin. Jason’s shoulders dropped in what Roy hoped was relief.

“Good,” Dick whispered over the comms, before swinging by Jason to haul him up. Dick landed by Roy, and beckoned him to follow. 

“Let’s get out of here, hmm?” Dick smiled, just as a loud **boom** resonated through the walls of the cave. Light flooded the theatre.

“FBI!” a voice thundered through the cave, and Roy never heard a mass of thousands of men and women go so silent before in his life. Roy’s own eyes widened, a bit bamboozled. 

“It’s okay,” Dick whispered, clutching Jason as swung forward into the air, towards the blown apart entrance. Roy followed, watching groups of men in black kevlar swarm below him, owls so clearly backing away, the meat men carrying the Scarecrow to safety.

“RED HOODS! ARSENAL! WITHDRAW!” Roy thundered as he swung, prompting the masses to march backwards, away from the mess. This was the law’s problem now. The policemen surrounding the scene-a ghost town of torn-up apartment complexes-seemed to regard them like they were entirely invisible.

Roy turned to look at a very pleased Dick.

“Goddamnit, Beauty,” Jason mumbled, and Roy threw his head back, laughs resonating into the night sky.


	4. Chapter 4

“Owls are moving to my city. Holy Terror is still strong there,” Roy spoke as he swiftly redressed Jason’s hand wound. Jason’s other hand was busy musing over sets of fancy tubes, flasks, bunsen burners and whatnot.

“We’re going to your city next, for sure,” Jason murmured, slowly turning a valve. Liquid started to drip into a test tube at snail’s pace.

“No, Jay,” Roy sneaked a hand to grasp Jason’s waist, pinching tight. Roy leaned into Jason’s ear.

“We’re going my my city, because I invited you,” Roy let a hand wander down to smack Jason on the ass. “Clear?”

“Clear,” Jason sounded breathy, which Roy regarded as a good sign. Roy had enough of Jason ordering them around-it’ll be his turn. Soon.

“Don’t get kinky over the antidote, boys,” Dick spoke coyly, slipping beside Jason. Dick’s reveal as an undercover agent seemed to set Dick free-he was less guarded, more carefree, and more importantly stopped playing dumb. Roy would say the beauty’s intellect rivaled Jason’s. 

Jason had been relatively nonverbal about the whole affair, but seemed altogether nonchalant. Dick had some kind of magic hold over the organisation, for the FBI never followed up to raid the Red Hoods or Roy’s recovering platoon of Arsenals. Roy supposed Jason knew in some capacity, just never quite prodded. After all, strangely enough, Dick’s only betrayal was his true occupation.

Even at that though, Dick continued to wear his wardrobe of stripper outfits around them. Today was a chiffon light green gown, middle exposed as usual. Roy could see Jason regard the outfit half-annoyed, half-amused. Dick simply leaned into Jason’s space, pressing a small, chaste kiss onto Jason’s cheek. Jason genuinely blushed.

“Psst. Move over,” Jason grunted, quickly reaching forward to close the valve. The test tube was filled with green liquid, and Jason pressed a cork into the mouth before setting it aside in a pile of similar test tubes.

With the Red Hoods’ and Arsenal’s reach (and the silent go ahead of authorities) it would be nigh easy to disseminate-the antitoxin was green, and they could sell them in pre-liquified, epipen form through similar-looking white vans.

It would be as simple as that.

 _Them_ , however, was a whole new question. Roy felt his tie being tugged forward by a very cheeky Jason, and Roy met his mouth, licking into it with increased fervour. Roy could feel Dick’s lips at the corner of his mouth, and Roy turned his head to respond. Jason chased his lips, and suddenly, all three sets of lips were pressed up against one another, licking and sucking and biting with an efficiency Roy didn’t think has possible.

Roy drew back as they did, feeling a collective heat bind them all together.

They’ll figure it out. Together.


End file.
